Posts Tagged ‘cuba’

It took a crisis in Cuba for urban agriculture to take over.The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 cut off nearly all agricultural imports to Cuba, including pesticides, fertilizers, farming equipment, and food.Not only did organic farming increase, by necessity, but Cubans began cultivating a significant percentage of their food in urban areas.The government encouraged them to do so.And in 1998, the city farms in Havana alone produced an estimated 541,000 tons of food for local consumption.These included 8,000 officially recognized production units cultivated by over 30,000 people.The population of Havana is 2.2 million.Today, some neighborhoods in the city produce 30 percent of their own subsistence needs.[1]

A significant growth in urban agriculture in the US is worth considering for several reasons.For one thing, such cultivation would be small-scale, and thus would encourage local consumption (the most local, from one’s own garden).But urban food production would also contribute to community food security, would rescue biodiversity, provide local jobs, create a complete cycle of nutrients and waste, aesthetically improve urban spaces, and increase the freshness and variety of the ingredients in the urban diet.Increasing a community’s food security would ultimately mean creating a strong, regionally based food system that wouldn’t rely upon imports, or foods that could be prevented from reaching people in times of war or crisis.Plant biodiversity would thrive as people learned to grow the specific varieties of foods native to their land, varieties that are everywhere disappearing as cities expand and farms consolidate.Such biodiversity would mean too a greater variety of foods and nutrients, which would contribute immensely to the health of those who ate them.The complete recycling of nutrients and waste within single households would have an immense, positive environmental impact on food-producing communities.And, urban spaces could be so much more beautiful!

The next question then is how we in the US might cause a bit of an agricultural revolution in our country akin to that which the end of trade with the Soviet Union caused in Cuba.

Working at Added Value’sRed Hook Community Farm in Brooklyn has been a personal (tiny) contribution of mine to the growth of urban agriculture in New York. The hundreds of community gardens throughout the five boroughs are consistently inspirational.Just Food trains community members to start up “City Farms” throughout the New York area.And the people working them, and eating the produce they’ve grown themselves, understand the value and joy of providing even a small portion of their own daily sustenance.

As for California, I’m gradually acquainting myself with the various organizations at work to increase food production in the Bay Area.Spiral Gardens runs a Community Farm in South Berkeley, producing food for volunteers as well as low-income seniors in a nearby housing complex.City Slicker Farms helps low-income West Oakland residents build and maintain backyard vegetable gardens.Beyond supporting and operating four productive gardens in North and West Oakland, People’s Grocery is collaborating with the Sustainable Agriculture Education Center (SAGE) to increase food cultivation in their recently opened 15-acre Agriculture Park in Sunol, which will grow fresh produce for West Oakland residents.SAGE has developed an “Agricultural Parks Toolkit” as a “comprehensive guide for public and private landowners who want to establish agriculture as a valued urban-edge amenity.”UC Berkeley’s Institute of Urban and Regional Development has been working with SAGE to develop a policy framework for “New Ruralism,” a concept meant to strengthen the emerging synergy between the new urbanism/smart growth movement and the sustainable agriculture/regional food systems movement.The Alemany Farm cultivates food on four and a half productive acres, right in the city of San Francisco.

For a personal take on these efforts…your author here is still a student.So for the moment, three UC Berkeley courses are contributing to the urban ag vision.“Land Use Controls” is supplying an understanding of the complex laws and organization behind zoning, subdividing, property taxation, and the influences of infrastructure on land use.“Cartographic Representation” is providing skills with which to artistically, persuasively map out what could really happen on urban territory.And “Urban Forestry” is lending a little more hands-on knowledge about what urban growth actually requires.Meanwhile, I’ll be eating foods every day that are all grown quite nearby.Altogether, that’s a personal start.

And this is personal stuff, urbanites.It’s your property, your garden, your hands in the dirt.You yourself might never grow enough to supply even an entire meal, but you can contribute to a change in the food system, one that would immensely benefit your community and it’s local health, economy, and security.Call me crazy, but I believe those are the areas that currently concern our population the most.